NTU Gives Tsai Gov’t a Clubbing on the Head: Rule by Law

  NTU Gives Tsai Gov’t a Clubbing on the Head: Rule by Law

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

March 26, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

The Ministry of Education has been blocking for over two months the assumption of office of Kuan Chung-ming, president-elect of National Taiwan University (NTU); the National Taiwan University Council, in an extraordinary meeting, voted down a resolution with an absolute majority denying the attempt to invalidate Kuan Chung-ming’s election. NTU did not dance with the political magic wand of the Education Ministry, showing that most of the people in this school are clear-minded with no bent backbone. When acting NTU President Kuo Tei-wei said, "Then we request that the Ministry of Education rule by law," in actuality it was also a clubbing on the head of the Tsai government for looking the other way in the bureaucratic trampling on university autonomy; this scandalous drama should draw its curtain as soon as possible.

The three doubts surrounding Kuan Chung-ming include serving as an independent board member of industry, plagiarism, and teaching at a university on the Mainland. For more than two months, following repeated investigations by National Taiwan University, Academia Sinica, Jinan University and Xiamen University and other related institutions, all doubts have been clarified; the Tsai government, however, feigned to have heard nothing and continued to stir up the muddy waters. What is even more regrettable is that Premier Lai Ching-te, during his Cabinet reshuffle, did his best to keep Pan Wen-chung at the Education Ministry, demonstrating his acquiescence in the anti-Kuan case. Such a government, while at wits end to resolve Taiwan's predicament of development, allowed, on the other hand, government agencies to trample on campuses in the abuse of authority and humiliate academia. How could it merit the wording "democratic progressive"?

Viewing the wrangling between anti-Kuan and pro-Kuan groups within the NTU campus, the "student troops" were already mobilized, from which we know to what step political intervention in the campus has arrived. In contrast with the erstwhile DPP resounding slogan "the party, government, and military should all withdraw from campuses," this is backpedaling with no end. Do not look down at this decision made by the NTU University Council in its extraordinary meeting; this is not only a successful counterattack in blocking political contamination of campuses, it is also a clubbing in the head of the Tsai government, demanding that it return to the track of "rule by law."

If Kuan Chung-ming’s election as NTU president were “invalidated” by the Ministry of Education in the end, it would veritably be dubbed the campus version of the “3/19 Incident.”

[Translator’s Note: the 3/19 Incident refers to the Sunflower Student Movement on March 19, 2014.]

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